What would Fess Parker do?

Back in my day, kids built forts with Lincoln Logs. My students seem to be constructing faux-rustic resorts and Great Wolf Lodge waterparks.

Three seven-year-old boys build Lincoln Log cabins with "really good beds". They are comparing the quality of a night's sleep in each cabin. One boy says, "My cabin has the Sweet Number bed." He probably means a "Sleep Number bed" since he explains choosing a number to go to sleep. To one-up him, the next boy says his cabin has a Select Comfort mattress. Is this for real, or a weird dream on my saggy, lumpy mattress? I couldn't hear for sure, but I think the third boy had a "duck bed" in his cabin.

What's next? A coonskin cap with built-in Bluetooth? And mints on your pillow?

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Get smarter with nuked soup

The problem with American schools is soup. Our students are stunted in their education by Chef Boyardee, Campbell's Soups, and Kraft macaroni and cheese. There's only so much teachers can do when we are up against the dumbed-down microwave pasta powerhouses.

Thanks to a student who calls Roman numerals, "Ramen noodles" this solution became clear to me. We need macaroni that teaches! We need Campbells vegetable soup with Roman numerals instead of ABCs and 123s. We need Kraft mac and cheese with Greek columns instead of Scooby Doo and Sponge Bob.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Playground deficiency annotated

Jacks pigs in a pen CHECK

Yoyo CHECK

Braiding plastic lanyards CHECK

Folding paper fortune tellers CHECK

Jump rope rhymes CHECK

Hopscotch CHECK

One potato two potato counting-out rhymes CHECK

Kick the can CHECK

Clothespin attaching playing card in bike spokes CHECK

Dodgeball CHECK

Chinese jump rope CHECK

Twirling on the jungle gym CHECK

Hanging from knees on the jungle gym CHECK

Hula hoop SORTA

Jacob's ladder SERIOUSLY DEFICIENT

Cat's cradle SERIOUSLY DEFICIENT

NOTES: Study participant claims no previous knowledge of string games. Possible memory loss due to Red Rover playground trauma.

Maybe I blocked it out. Could be a repressed memory. Or maybe nobody at Eastridge Elementary played string games in the first half of the Sixties. Maybe we were watching Mercury and Gemini splash-downs on the black/white tv in Mrs. Kelleher's library. Did we prefer playing "Beatles' Stewardess Girlfriend"?

Maybe I was reclining on the school nurse's cot having a nosebleed when everyone else learned to make Jacob's Ladder and play Cat's Cradle. It was quiet there in the nurse's office. Sometimes surrounded by small children showing their string game accomplishments, I wish for one of those long ago moments removed from the chaos of "free play".

"Look! I made oliver," the first-grader announces while holding up stringy fingers. Please say it again. On top of my string failures, I seem to be going deaf. Oliver?

"Oliver, I made oliver. You know, Ms. Nancy, those pants with the tops attached!" Oliver? Oh, overalls.

Grandpa's overalls! If you drop a string on Jacob's Ladder you get a configuration resembling overalls.

Beam me up, Green Acres!

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

This boy will go far!

"You got your hair cut! I like it," proclaimed the boy across the desk. I'd never seen this lad of nine or ten years old before, but I did have my hair cut quite short recently. It was a few minutes after closing time, and my goal was to move the last patrons out of the library circulation area ASAP. I gladly agreed with his observation to expedite closing. Still his enthusiastic comment tickles me.

The library staff of seven has five glamorous females with various hair shades between silver and chrome. As the substitute, I fit right in this crew. Some patrons ask if I'm the sister of another staff member.

You can't help but like a smiling young male who is even aware of the hair of 50-something women. Don't know who he thought I was, or how I might have gotten my hair cut at the library, but he could certainly teach many 50-something males the right thing to say to ladies.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Lava Lanch

Yes, it rhymes with "branch". The elementary art kids had a grand time making transparent constructions today with an assortment of clear and tinted plastic boxes. They added other metallic, reflecting, and see-through items to create intriguing and nearly-neon designs.



The first Dallas Opera my son and I attended was Tchaikovsky's "The Queen of Spades" in 2003. The set included a clear plexiglass staircase that looked like it came from Target's bath decor and toothbrush-holder department. The student constructions today were more interesting:

"It goes up and up and then it's like a waterfall!"

"There's a coffin on the next shelf."

"It's a runway for models at a fashion show!"

"No, it's a Lava Lanch!"



I didn't know whether to launch lava projectiles with a medieval catapult, or lunch on magma salad sandwiches on mica. Heaven knows, I've eaten some school cafeteria lunches that sat in my gut like psychedelic warmed wax blobs. During the ensuing debate the kids agreed that "lava lamp" was an incorrect pronunciation. "Lava lanch" was the correct term! I'm picking my battles on this controversy.

After building transparent/reflecting constructions, the kids started drawings of their own sculptures. How do we describe transparency? I'm including some of the works-in-progress:







Maybe Cinderella lanched her celebrity career with glass slippers.

Brain Hair

I was jumping through flaming hoops trying to get the preschoolers to tell me the difference between lions and tigers after we looked at photos. I really just needed one student to tell all of us that tigers have stripes, or even "stwipes," but it wasn't happening. We looked at more photos. One student piped up that daddy lions have "brain hair," and they all nodded in agreement.

Thirty Girlfriends

"I have thirty girlfriends," boasts the prekindergarten student missing his two front teeth. "The one who broke up with me got hippotized."

Dang. Don't you hate it when that happens. You meet a guy. Preferably one with all his own teeth. Go out a few times. It's not really working, so you call it off. Next thing you know, you are getting very sleepy, and fat, sleepy, and fat. When he snaps his fingers, you start clucking like a chicken. Even worse, you start humming detached snippets of old Fleetwood Mac.

Zat was Venn, Diz is Now

What is a Venn diagram? You know them, even if you don't know you do. They are those intersecting circle illustrations that describe specific populations.



First, you lassoo all women in one corral. Then you swing your lariat around everyone in the United States. Next you snare everybody born 1946-1956 in a noose. Then you enclose all the art teachers in a pink bubble, and all bloggers in a cyber circle. These circles all buy tickets for the bumper cars at the Texas State Fair where they bump into and overlap each other. Don Ho sings "Tiny Bubbles" with Lawrence Welk's champagne music bubble machine and Mr. Moose dropping ping pong balls on Captain Kangaroo.

Hua li'i
I ka waina
Au hau'oli
I ka wa au inu

Tiny bubbles
Make me warm all over
With a feelin' that
I'm gonna love you till the end of time

Who a leakied is so last week. This week it is who a barfied. Put a dozen first graders in a circle. One of them projectile vomits. In their panic and body-functions exhilaration, the eleven run right through the barf on the rug in attempts to flee. This requires a different diagram and a big can of Lysol.

The elementary art students had different ideas about Robert McCloskey's childrens' classic, Blueberries For Sal. One student drew manic overlapping circles for giant blueberries. He was making a "Venn berrygram!"

You just thought you knew

Again my students have set me straight.



This is the Grin Eraser.

V is for Chameleon...

"...because a chameleon seems to vanish."


Q is For Duck: An Alphabet Guessing Game, is the book of the week. I'm intrigued observing which kids catch on to the puzzle of the book. When they get it, the kids are so excited. One four year-old boy tells me when chameleons change color it's called "Camelotch"!

My gosh! He's absolutely right. I want to burst into song:

In Camelot.
Camelot! Camelot!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Camelot,
Camelot! That's how conditions are.



Camelotch! What a perfect word to describe boys. My kids were addicted to camouflage from age three to seven. These were the little boys who used magnolia seed pods for hand grenades. They also carried shields and swords to battle dragons invading the fenced front patio that we called Camelot. They were partial to gleaming armor, but they called their GI Joe outfits "flage".

"Flage" sounds bad, like a mucus-producing bacterial infection. Besides the familiar pattern on the fabric, "flage" is distinguished by a surplus of pockets to hold Kleenex.

"Flage" wearers know what they like when it comes to birthday cake decoration.


The Online Etymology Dictionary guides me through my most elusive spelling word, camouflage:
1917, from Fr. camoufler, Parisian slang, "to disguise," from It. camuffare "to disguise," probably alt. by Fr. camouflet "puff of smoke," on the notion of "blow smoke in someone's face." The British navy in World War I called it dazzle-painting.

Little guys will always make me laugh. They gotta play hurt wearing their glow-in-the-dark dinosaur shirts, football helmets, and "flage".

The Ill-Tempered Beast Wakes and Growls in Her Cave

The four o'clock class of kindergarten/first grade kids was explaining Fun Racing. Fun Racing is when you take a magazine around to grown-ups and ask them to sign. You take the magazine back and get a toy. If a lot of them sign it, you get an electric scooter. There's Fun Racing at school, and Fun Racing at Girl Scouts.

Heaven knows there's Fun Racing at Little League, French club, debate team, marching band (ESPECIALLY marching band), Cub Scouts, and every other activity or organization children are involved in. Serving on the board of a public school parent-teacher organization, I became very skeptical about Fun Racing. The funds raised too often went for happy face sticker and candy "incentives" for teachers to give students. They frequently paid for annual appreciation gifts for the school principal, or the board members (and fundraising chairpersons) of the very same organization.

Fun Racing creates ridiculous competition between students and grade levels, while taking time away from homework and family togetherness. Fun Racing does not create young entrepreneurs or teach poise. Worst, most Fun Racing gives only a tiny percentage of the sales money back to the organization.

Somewhere along the line of having three kids in three schools, and each in a minimum or three sports or enrichment activities, I shorted out. Blue smoke came out of my ears. I started writing a check, one hundred percent of which went directly to the organization, and a note that I declined to give permission for my children to participate in Fun Racing. I admit that sometimes when I was extremely harried as a single parent, I wrote that Fun Racing was against our religion.

I know it's harsh, but the only ways to curtail the endless Fun Racing is to decline to participate as a student/family, and decline to enable as a giftwrap purchaser. When you notice something positive in your school zone or district, send a note and a check. A child may say "thank you", and a worn-out mom may hug you!

Occupational Outlook Handbook

In high school I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don't, but that's a different story. My high school counselor, Mrs. North, gave me a pep talk about attending Bryn Mawr, and sent me home with a book of career choices the size of the Los Angeles white pages. Mrs. North thought I should become a medical illustrator. She didn't understand that I fainted whenever I had blood drawn. Let's just say my middle name is Queasy Louise. Drawing accurate colored pencil innards illustrations was not my destiny. Neither was Bryn Mawr. To this day, if someone says, "Bryn Mawr", I get a colored pencil mental diagram of the inside of the human eye, then get noodly in the knees.

My students are much more focused about their career plans. The three-and-a-half year-olds discuss their futures while munching on popcorn.

"I'm going to be a Pizza Girl," says the dark-haired girl.
"Well, I'm going to be an Alien," responds the red-headed boy.

Stay tuned for the 3D classic Pepperoni Original Crusts From Space after these messages from our sponsor. Instructions for making your own 3D glasses come from the U.S. Geological Survey Terra Kids web site.

You Nork, You Nork

Two of my preschoolers just returned from a trip to see the "Yifull Tower". I didn't know they had been in France, because they told me before spring break that they were going to Africa. Maybe they went to Africa AND France. On the way home, they saw the Statue of Liverdy in You Nork.


"New York, New York" is a song from the 1946 musical On the Town, which has music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The first line of this song is, "New York, New York, it's a hell of a town: the Bronx is up and the Battery's down." My teen-in-residence, being a self-assured third child, is into Frank Sinatra. Frank was confused, and didn't know about You Nork.

On my drive to work I pass a shop with a banner proclaiming, "Cigarettes Discount/Open Sunadays". I would like to work Sunadays, and stay home Uddadays. This shop is in the same neighborhood as the classic "Wok Bueno" restaurant.

Another student told me his friend was on a trip to "Princess". Turned out she was in Paris, France. If you pick up Paris, France with Silly Putty, then twist it a bit, you do get "Princess". I hope that young student will visit the Yifull Tower while she's in Princess. Being an art teacher, I wonder how one might make Georges Pompidou out of pipe cleaners and pom-pons.

(Composition of Silly Putty 65% - Dimethyl Siloxane 17% - Silica 9% - Thixotrol ST 4% - Polydimethylsiloxane 1% - Decamethyl cyclopentasiloxane 1% - Glycerine 1% - Titanium Dioxide )

Two boys were not to be outdone by the girl transatlantic travelers. They had ridden on the "D.A.R.K. Train" over spring break. So much of Dallas city government and rapid transit is frightening, but I'd never actually considered the eerie Halloween possibilities. [I do wonder why the DART Rail can't have easy tickets and fares like the D.C. Metro.] And besides, what about the D.A.R.T.H. Rail options at warp speed? I see the Wookiee singing with Sinatra...


"The Battery's down" always reminds me of my brother's Dodge Dart the year he was doing his student teaching at a rural school. Many sub-zero mornings the Dart's battery was down.

FYI: Finding Nemo underpants are no longer as newsworthy as Bob the Builder briefs for the 3-5 yr. old male demographic. Spiderman waterproof band-aids are the ultimate!
Nanu nanu, You Nork.

The Three Baffled Goats Gruff

What in the hey-ho is a Billy Goat Gruff?? As a kid, the troll made a lot of sense, compared to the goats. Who was Billy? Was he as cute as Bill Z. in Mrs. Erickson's first grade class? Bill Z. had a buzz cut, and big, dark brown eyes.

And what's up with "Gruff"?
Gruff is much more worrisome than troll!
The definitions say "course, thick, large, rough, surly, brusque, and forbidding."

When my sons were little they demanded that I say, "Who's that TRIPPY TROMPING on my bridge?" "It's just a little billy goat was the answer." You tell it that way once, and you are stuck for the next seven years! Children crave repetition. They need grown-ups to always read or tell the story the exact same way. We gain the confidence to change the elements only when our safe grown-up has given us the firm foundation of repetition-on-demand.

Last week my little students gave me a new insight on this tale first recorded in 1845 by Peter Christen Asbjornsen. "What's a belly goat?" "Do the goats dance on the bridge?" The image lurks just off-stage in the absurd theater of my over-active mind. That poor troll! I'm sure the belly-dancing goats have rubies in their belly buttons as they play finger cymbals on the bridge!

It's an image to keep in mind during long rainy days with small children. I am closing my eyes really tight, but the belly goats seem to be singing, "You've Got To Have a Gimmick"!

Getting the sympathy vote

The kindergarteners got into a shoving and shouting match at five p.m. during the popcorn snack break over which presidential candidate was The Real Liar, Liar [Pants On Fire]. Just before I outlawed the discussion topic for the rest of art class, one girl told me she had voted for George W. at school. I asked why, and she explained that she felt sorry for him because his teeth hurt so much. What??? You, know, Ms. Nancy! They are made of wood.

Dang. I didn't realize Rummy chopped down the cherry tree on the ranch in Crawford. We all know Karl Rove has been throwing a lot of silver dollars across the river.

Ms. Wednesday

On Monday my students told me that they knew about another Ms. Nancy. "He's a spider, and he plays tricks," they said. It's true. Anansi the spider is a trickster of African folktales. I am sometimes a trickster of art classes, and have been known to teach spiderweb weaving projects. I only have two legs, though.

On Tuesday my students told me my name was Ms. Wednesday. It had never occurred to me how similar that sounds. I kind of like it. It's not as racy as Miss November, or as literary as the new novels about Thursday Next, but it's fun.

On Wednesday a student told me he knew another Ms. Nancy. "She is my French teacher, and she is really old, just like you." Great. You can see why I prefer being Ms. Wednesday! I also like it when a parent nudges his child and says in a stage whisper, "Look! It's Ms. Nancy, the craziest art teacher on the planet!" Boy, that makes my day.

Perhaps inspired by the woman I watched doing Tai Chi exercises on the lawn of the Santa Fe Post Office, I've been teaching line lessons through movements that are a mix of pantomime and modern dance. My goal is to impress on the kids the importance of using one hand to hold their paper on the table while they use the other hand to draw big, strong lines. I'm teaching them that pulled lines are stronger than pushed lines, that little snail lines only need our hands and fingers, but big whale lines need our whole arm and shoulder, and some hip-hop hiccup mountain lines (not to be confused with mountain lions) need us to move us our hips, knees and ankles. My knees and ankles haven't moved this way since I practiced tae kwon do side kicks with my boys when they were pretty little. It's been fun and effective. The kids are all game to mimic that old lady, Ms. Wednesday. They are all getting the idea of holding the paper in place while drawing. I believe occupational therapists call that a bilateral skill--your left hand isn't doing what your right hand is doing. If these little kids can get this skill by mimicking me doing a silly dance, it is worth it. But after Day Three I can barely move! Don't ask me to do the limbo.

The Super Smart Pig...

....built his house of kryptonite. We are fracturing fairy tales and scrambling stories super. Today the elem kids made Super Smart Pigs, complete with capes and x-ray vision glasses. Did a lot of brainstorming of super abilities for our pigs. This is going better than the year when we made Rock & Roll Trolls at the Fairyland Bandstand, complete with teeny tiny disco balls. Back to the stuffed pigs--no apple in the mouth! Buy pink paper sacks (brown bag lunch style) from Michaels, or an artsy/craftsy/party supply store. Open up the sacks by sneaking your hand in and wiggling your fingers all around to open the sack. These "pigs are very hungry. Can't you hear them oinking?" (Everybody oinks like crazy, and talented folks also grunt and snuffle) The pigs get fed with crumpled up double pages of the Dallas Morning News. Depending on the age of the kids, the teacher may need to do the "feeding" to avoid ripping the sacks. Roll down and scrunch the top of the sack as you would a lunch bag. You could also fold and staple. Glue on ears where the bag is scrunched. The legs could be pink felt, construction paper, or corks. Draw the face with markers, or get fancy gluing googly eyes and button noses. Curl pink pipe cleaners (cut in half) for tails, and poke them into the back. That had to hurt! While the preschoolers were happy just making pigs, we went for a more complex scenario for the elementary kids. When the Super Smart Pigs were done, the kids were "flying" them around and having comic book dialogues. A six-year old boy stopped making those boy shooting sound effects, and announced, "There! I got him! The evil Canadian is no more!" The middle school kids will create Personality Plus Pigs next week to connect with the characterization focus in drama class. I am getting the urge to create my own papier mache personality pig!

DBDs

Last year I had the delight of teaching a little guy named David who couldn't pronounce the V sound. Dabid lobed watching DBDs. I am so old that boy's underpants were called BVDs when I was a kid, so I had trouble squelching the giggles wheneber Dabid talked about his favorite DBDs. I also had trouble pronouncing the V sound by the end of each Wednesday class with Dabid. It was absolutely contagious. My team teacher and I, then the director and other staff, then the other kids and their parents...all of us falling bictim to this birus of pronunciation.

The only other experience that comes close is the little girl who couldn't pronounce the R sound. So instead of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, she sang loudly of Dudolph the dead-nosed deindeeh. The memory of Dachel singing about Dudolph haunts my holidays like Scrooge's ghosts.

Today I took a big technology leap and bought a DBD player. I want to be able to watch my new "Triplets of Belleville" dbd, and show it to Steben's bideo-making friends. I also want to cue up a funny spot in "The Gods Must Be Crazy" for our jungle camp, and I could only find that old mobie on DBD.

I will report as soon as I regain control of my consonants on my adbenture with Mike to get a cd player for my Buick. Our shopping trip was a comedy of errors, but we were busy discussing how to grill chicken, and the recent history of health insurance in the U.S.

Must sign off. Hab an emergency appointment with Professor 'iggins.

Thanks for all the shrimp

A 4-yr. old girl in the morning class asked me, "Are you a grown-up?"

Two other girls announced, "She said, 'Are you a grown-up?"

Two other kids said, "Teacher, he stepped on my hand."

One boy said, "Her name is Miss Nancy."

I said, "Do I act like a grown-up?"

"No," they all said, "You act like a flamingo ballerina!"

And now, do you like my tutu?

Leprechaun traps

Had a phone call today from a parent who needed help building a leprechaun trap. This is not an abnormal event since I am the Guy Noir of kids' art, still searching for the answers to life's mysterious questions from the eleventh floor of the Acme Building---and armed with a hot glue gun.

I favor green plastic strawberry baskets for trapping most magical beings. Pipe cleaners are good, too. There are always questions about the proper bait for the trap. How big is a leprechaun? The size of a garden gnome, or of a troll doll? Are they "not turtle animals"? How do the rainbow and the pot of gold fit into the big picture? How can we make a humane trap? I am troubled by old-timey black&white cartoon bear traps, falling anvils, and Curt Goudy's breathy narrations of big game hunts on "The American Sportsman" in 1966.

Steven brought all his empty clothes hangers down to the laundry room this morning before breakfast. Please visualize hangers over your arm from elbow to thumb. He plonked them down on the dryer, which was already running (the early bird gets the lint). Of course, the vibrating dryer wiggled most of the wire hangers onto the floor in a big tangle. No elves unsnarled them during the day. Elves are notorious "not turtle animals". I don't know how to trap leprechauns, but I do know about laundry room mommy traps!